[so, as Edom was addressed] ...For the day of the LORD is near upon all the nations.
As you have done, it shall be done to you; your deeds shall return on your own head."

Obadiah 1:11,15.

The people of Israel had been brutally attacked and its cities ransacked by the Babylonian military: — Its desperate refugees fled – as best they could.

But

human nature is as it is, in which self-interest rules, and so the nearby people of Edom, rather than pitying their brother nation, then saw this as opportunity for their own enrichment – to plunder the fleeing refugees, and those who did not plunder them – simple then

stood aloof from the distress of the fleeing families.

Learning to Care
is the
Purpose of Life

Remember: the Bible is not written to tell us about history. It contains history – to show us God's behaviour within it!

♥

– that we may come to know Him better and so trust Him more! –

The whole book of this prophet Obadiah in Holy Scripture is therefore dedicated to showing us God's own reaction to the treatment of the vulnerable around us.

The nation of Edom,

descended from Esau son of Isaac, son of Abraham, and the brother of Jacob, does not exist any more, for –

as Obadiah then wrote: "there shall be no survivor for the house of Esau, for the LORD has spoken."

A nationwiped out of
human history
because
they were
not willing to
LEARN TO CARE!

Recently,

among those in the receiving countries of the desperate refugees now fleeing from Syria, a TV news channel interviewed a local elderly man in Greece who was very angry that his coffee-time at his local coffee shop, to which he had been coming for years, was now being disrupted by the unwelcome presence of these foreign refugees.

His personal priorities were obvious, and it was not compassion toward his fellow man.

— Nearly three million Syrian refugees are now living in poverty in Lebanon —

♥Colonel Muhammed Faris
(of the bombed city of Aleppo
in Syria), who was the first
Syrian to go into space
(in 1987), is now arefugee with his wife
and three children
in Turkey.♥
At least 7.6 million Syrians
are internally displaced,
and millions more have
fled the country,
according to the
United Nations'
2015 estimates.♥
Hundreds of thousands
have applied for asylum
in Europe,
which continues
to tighten its
crowded borders.

These caring words

on the 1903 pedestal plaque of America's Statue of Liberty deserve to be remembered —

after the rise of Hitler's Nazis, the desperate refugees to America from Nazi Germany were forced to return to Europe after the U.S. denied them refuge.

For instance,

in May–June 1939 alone, the United States refused to admit over 900 Jewish refugees who had sailed from Hamburg, in Germany, on the St. Louis.
It is therefore recorded in the U.S. Holocaust Historical Museum that –

"While some American activists sincerely intended to assist refugees, serious obstacles to any relaxation of U.S. immigration quotas included public opposition to immigration during a time of economic depression, xenophobia, and anti-Semitic feelings in both the general public and among some key government officials." (emphasis mine)

During the second half of 1941, even after unconfirmed reports of the mass murder perpetrated by the Nazis filtered to the West, the US Department of State placed even stricter limits on immigration based on national security concerns.

Although thousands of Jews had been admitted into the United States under the combined German-Austrian quota (1938–1941),
the US did not pursue an organized and specific rescue policy for Jewish victims of Nazi Germany until January 1944.

Others haveignorantly
type-cast them as
an Islamist danger
to public freedoms
and human rights,
even though a
sigificant number of
Syrian refugees identify themselves as Christian!

If the past has any value, it is to teach us lessons to be remembered . . .

Accordingly — as God said concerning Edom — so shall it be!

In Germany,

the recent successes of the anti-refugee partyAlternative fur Deutschland (AfD) in the German regional elections seem to indicate that Europe is facing a crisis of confidence that may lead to a new era of intolerance and nationalism.

So for those

Syrian refugees, Jordan, March 2016

willing to think, it would also be good for Europe to remember that Brittany (Bretagne / Breizh / Bertaèyn), in North West France today, is so called as a consequence of refugees from Britain, beginning during the Roman military occupation of that country but particularly after the attacks of the Angles and Saxons from Germany, which also drove Brythonic Celts (Cymri) into the mountains of Wales, and others into the Cornish peninsula where later Duke Artorius (Arthur) of Round Table fame helped secure their safety.

A time when
'king' Arthur / Artorius
rose to prominence
in Cornwall.

But in Russia (primary supporter of the Syrian dictator, and bomber of civilian rebel-held areas) Its foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova tweets –

"the migration crisis has been caused by irresponsible attempts to spread western-type democracy to the Middle East,"

just hours before EU leaders are set to convene in Brussels to discuss the problem of accommodating the refugees.

• So Ironically, on Wednesday, March 16, 2016, the seriously injured German far-right NPD party candidate in the Hesse region, Stefan Jagsch, is rescued from his car crash on the road between Altenstadt and Büdingen by two Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Germany, who then administer first aid to him before the ambulance arrives.
• In January, Jagsch had taken part in a aggressive neo-Nazi march at which Syrian asylum-seekers were abused as "invaders", "benefit-scrounging tourists" and "lawless primates".

Later, his NPD party thanks the asylum seekers in Hesse, who gave first aid to Stefan Jagsch, for their "humane deed".

Lebanon

has more refugees per head of the population than any country in the world, but it is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has not allowed the U.N. to set up formal camps for Syrians. Some politicians fret about the impact of mainly Sunni refugees from Syria on the country's sectarian balance. Power in Lebanon is carefully divided between Christians, Shi'ite Muslims, Sunnis and other groups. Surveys by the United Nations refugee agency and the Norwegian Refugee Council suggest the number of children whose births remain unregistered in Lebanon could be as high as 50,000. Aid agencies see similar difficulties registering children in Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, which host millions of Syrian refugees between them.

That means the number of Syrian children facing statelessness is likely to be much higher.

More

than a third of almost 200,000 refugee migrants to have reached Greece, Italy and Spain so far this year are under 18 and aid agencies are warning of a worrying new trend. Gemma Parkin, a Save the Children spokesperson, said the proportion of unaccompanied children has increased dramatically. "We’ve had children as young as nine years old arriving completely on their own."

The grossly

*i.e. a social problem
rather than an
international
terror organisation.

ignorant explanation, by the U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (in an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain on March 23) regarding the tragic ISIL (Da'esh) attack in Brussels, Belgium, that the terror attack was because –

*"There is no 'assimilation', very little 'assimilation' for whatever reason", and so
by implication blames Muslims/Arabs in general, and refugees in particular,simply does not deserve comment of any kind.

♥About 35% of
Palestinian Arabs
identify themselves
as Christian.

At least

3,000 refugee migrants have died in treacherous journeys across the Mediterranean Sea so far in 2016, drowning or being suffocated in the bottom of overcrowded smugglers’ boats. Dr Erna Rijnierse, a doctor on the MV Aquarius rescue ship run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and SOS Méditerranée, said the humanitarian situation was becoming ever more horrific. In her months treating refugees for injuries sustained from torture, beatings, rape and sexual abuse she has seen several tragedies. On 20 July she boarded a boat drifting off the coast of Libya to find the bodies of 22 refugees on board, mostly women, crammed between the wooden floor and rubber hull.